Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Sights and Sounds Now Only Found in Comfort TV

Back in January I reflected
on how every year that passes takes us further away from the television era
celebrated in this blog.

It’s an unsettling thing
for those of us who watched these shows in their original runs, because we
lived in that world with those characters. The schools, the offices, and the
grocery stories all looked just like the ones we once knew.

But we have reached a point
where current and future generations will view these episodes the way my
generation watched movies from the 1930s and ‘40s, with an inescapable
awareness that this was a story set in another time.

Comfort TV contains sights
and sounds that are rarely glimpsed now, or that have disappeared altogether.
It’s not that we miss them necessarily, or would prefer to have them back instead
of what has replaced them. But seeing them again can make us happy, because
they belong to a time when perhaps we felt we were happier than we often are
now.

If you remember these, I
hope you recall them as fondly as I do.

Gas Stations That Were Service Stations

From the ‘ding’ of the hose
as you pull up to the pumps, to the attendant who fills your tank, cleans your
windshield and offers to check the tires, to the quarts of oil stacked in
pyramid shape in the window, the classic TV gas station is a veritable fount of
nostalgia. Let’s not even talk about the under $1 a gallon price for gas back
then. They also provided employment for many Comfort TV characters, including
Bud Anderson.

Pay Phones and Telephone Booths

Both are still around, but
before cell phones they played a more prominent role in our lives, and in the
plots of countless classic TV shows. Other moments in these shows that belong
to the past: characters looking up phone numbers in the telephone book, and
executives telling their receptionists to “hold my calls.”

A Matchbook As a Clue To a Crime

People smoked a lot more in
the classic TV era, which is why you’d find a ready supply of matchbooks at
every bar, restaurant, hotel and nightclub. And they’d get dropped an awful lot
by suspicious characters, providing cops and detectives like Amos Burke and Peter Gunn with a
convenient place to begin an investigation.

Then-Current Pop Culture Expressions

“Only her hairdresser knows
for sure” was the punch line to many a joke in vintage situation comedies
– one that would be confusing to modern viewers. But back then everybody
got the reference.

Soft Drinks in Bottles

I still see these
occasionally, but plastic bottles have replaced their glass counterparts. Which
is somewhat ironic in this green-conscious time, as glass is more recyclable
than plastic. Some people still swear that Coke tasted better from a real
bottle.

The Milkman

Speaking of bottles – I’m
sure there are rural areas of America where this service is still common, but
in the 1960s most families still had their milk delivered by a man in a white
uniform. The Baxters were one of them, as evidenced by the Hazel episode “The Retiring Milkman.”

Trading Stamps

Many grocery stores and
other retailers once gave trading stamps to customers, which could be saved in
books and then used to purchase other items free or at a huge discount. The
S&H Green Stamp company was the best known.

You’ll hear references to these
stamps in many classic sitcoms, most notably in the first-season Brady Bunch episode “54-40 and Fight.”

Doctors Making House Calls

When a child was sick in
the Comfort TV era, the doctor came to them. Perhaps this was done to save
money on building a doctor’s office set for one episode, but such house calls
were not rare at that time. A recurring theme in The Donna Reed Show is the frequency of Alex Stone’s house calls, and
how they interfered withspending time
with his own children.

If you remember these, you
may also remember:

Stable Doors (not just on
stables!)

Babies being fed Pablum

Doing Homework on a
Typewriter

Slumber Parties

Students Singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” On a School Bus

What are some of your
favorite bygone sights and sounds from the classic TV era?

6 comments:

Full-service gas stations are still found in New Jersey and Oregon due to legal reasons. In the latter state, however, self-service gas stations are now allowed in counties that have less than 40,000 residents.

Just thought of this the other day...as a 70's kid I remember a shoe repair shop where you could have your shoes done while you waited. In these little half "modesty booths" so you wouldn't have to be embarrassed by people seeing you in your stocking feet. There's a good example of these on this webpage: http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2015/03/hidden-shoe-repair-shop.html

The expression "Only her hairdresser knows for sure" seems to imply that women had to go to hairdressers to color their hair, and I thought that women could color their own hair with the product. If they did that, their hairdressers wouldn't have to know either.

The reference to soft drinks in glass bottles reminds me of a moment not from tv but from the movie "Back to the Future". Marty back in 1955 has just bought a glass bottled soft drink from a vending machine and is trying to twist off the metal cap when his dad, then a teen of about his age, takes the drink from him, uses the built-in bottle opener to pull the cap off the bottle, and hands the drink back to him.